Firmware update, not possible on either windows or mac osx...

EDIT Now it freakin works.. SOooo, there's a difference between vcp and the dxx ftdi drivers.. i did not know about the vcp before until just now. installing the vcp seems to be working now. also, i have currently unloaded the apple ftdi driver which might also be necessary but i'm not sure. phew, this is a rather frustrating process to go through.. thanks so much for the help @jmarcelino though!

Hello,

Running Mac OSX 10.12.3 with the lopy connected via an original apple dongle to the USB C port. Lopy inserted correctly into the expansion board, all headers inserted properly and jumper is in place. When trying to run the firmware updater tool I just get "the upgrade failed, please check the connections...."

after several attempts I tried running it on my windows 10 PC, but here there are just no visible ports in the update tool... jesus

any suggestions ?

EDIT (just to give an overview):

I tried a different USB cable, without any different result.

I do see the lopy listed as an ft230x basic UART device in my System Report in OSX

@robert-hh hello robert, thanks for all the great help - it's really awesome!!

I managed to figure out, when booting in safe mode - that i can temporarily connect via ftp again (because the boot.py is bypassed).. and thus make changes to the boot.py.

soo.. the thing is though, that it seems the lopy does not care AT ALL about what I put into the boot.py script now, even after unplugging the short between G28 and 3v (which I assume should make it go back to loading boot and main).

EDIT
tinkering more about, it turned out I had to set the heartbeat to false in order to use the rgbled onboard the lopy. well done soren. anyway, it is indeed responding now, but setting up the thing with custom wlan configuration is really difficult. this topic has become pretty messy. I tried to change the topic name, but got a message that i couldn't.. it is pretty misleading atm. are there any admins on here?

but safe boot doesn't set anything back, only goes into a temporary state where it bypasses boot.py and main.py as far as I can read. also the factory reset filesystem only seems possible when you have UART access...

@soren If you are able to update the firmware via USB, then you can co the hard way: : erasing the flash and reflashing the image. I just tried that with my LoPy. That works, erases everything in the device and brings back the REPL prompt on UART, which is set active in a hidden
_boot.py in flash, which is executed before boot.py. All that requires, that you can reflash your device. Erasing the flash is easy, of you have the source tree installed. Then just call:make erase
But all it needs is esptool.py form the repository, and the command.python3 ./esptool.py --chip esp32 --port /dev/cu.xxxx --baud 480800 erase_flash
Then you could reload the software, connect through UART and a simple terminal program and setup WiFi manually step by step, e.g. using the first four statement of my sample script below.
I have placed an esptool.zip archive here, which is just a copy of the tree from esp-idf. https://github.com/robert-hh/Shared-Stuff

Both rshell and ampy rely on a REPL prompt to be available. Did you try to connect with a simple serial terminal program like screen?

screen /dev/cu.xxxx 115200
Do you get the REPL prompt?
If not, then coding errors in boot.py before activating the UART may stop boot.py, and REPL on UART does not get active. Then, the step I would take is safe boot, which skips boot.py and main.py. Maybe that will set WiFi back to the initial state.

@robert-hh it just keeps saying "connecting..." forever..
wondering if, because i put the wlan stuff in boot.py if this could have hampered the ability to connect to the board ? I mean if what I wrote was wrong and also placed before the uart is initialized?

@soren
e.g.
connect serial /dev/cu.xxxxx 115200
or
rshell -p /dev/cu.xxxx -b 115200
/dev/cu.xxxx ist the name of your serial port. On my linux machine, it's /dev/ttyUSB0
Once connected, /flash shows the TLD of WiPY or Lopy.
It works OK for file transfer and management. That should bring you back to the point where ftp works.

@soren If serial is working in a sense that you get a REPL prompt with a serial terminal like screen, then you could try Adafruit's ampy tool or Dave Hylands' rshell (https://github.com/dhylands/rshell). They both are pretty generic and allow to exchange scripts with the board and run them. This way, you can also set your board again for ftp. The script I use on my LoPy to set it to station mode is:

@jmarcelino Hey, OK so I think I got serial working now, but I still can't sync my project from pymakr... just keeps saying "syncing failed".. is this because there is already bootleader on the lopy? remember, I can't get into ftp because I tried changing wlan password which didn't work and now I can't connect to it.

You could try the safe boot procedure https://docs.pycom.io/pycom_esp32/_downloads/wipy_pinout.pdf. But I'm not sure whether that brings you back to the standard WiFi credentials. I think so, but cannot remember, whethe rI've gone this path once.
You mentioned to have tried Windows. You need the VCP driver von Windows too. But that should be less of a problem. The easient choice is Linux! You could try to boot a PC (or MAC?) with a Linux test image. Most distributions have images which you can boot from USB or DVD. Try Ubuntu, Lint or Knoppix.

So I managed to get an FTP access up and running (awesome!!) but I also managed to try and change the server and wlan login credentials, which now resulted in the lopy not showing up as a wlan.. (well f*'** done soren).. so now I literally have no idea how to get access to my lopy with USB not working propperly.. any ideas ?

EDIT
did a factory reset, but this did not seem to change my boot and main files.. which means i still can't see the lopy on wifi

I agree, stick with telnet + ftp for development and leave the serial connection for firmware upgrades and debugging.

I do think you have too many serial drivers installed and active and - as they say, too many serial drivers in the kitchen spoils the broth - you'll need to actually disable or delete the ones you don't need.

When you say: "synched a project", does thar mean you#re using Pymakr? If yes, don't do that. Pymakr simply adds another layer of strange issues. Better use basic tools, like an ftp client of your choice, screen or telnet, ...
There you have much better response, and if you have issues, the reason is obvious.

@jmarcelino
so, after being able to connect and I synced a project several times - now I suddenly am back to being unable to connect. I did not reboot my system.. It just tells me "invalid device address.." and the lopy doesn't show up in configurations.. this has got to be the most uneasy mcu i've ever dealt with